“Welcome home,”
like a heavy blanket tossed
over shivering shoulders.
Familiar and foreign,
like a fading fragment of
a memory, warped through
an hourglass.

“Are you glad to be back?”
Words sung over
cloud-drenched
mountaintops and hidden behind
waterfalls and laced in Spanish
echoes and handwritten
notes with goodbyes
mingled with “stay.”

“How was it?”
But a single word could not
cup its hands around a child’s
rolling laughter, a sobbing
group of not-even-friends-yet
around a gray table, cracked
sandals that are still worn
over and over again, colors
enough to melt winter away.

“Are you adjusted back by now?”
No, if you mean I have
jumped without fear back into
the whirlwind of a life I paused
but that didn’t stop rolling film.
Yes, if you mean that I am
making peace with a permanently
broken heart, sowing memories
like dandelion seeds that take root,
turn      yellow,      and      then      dance      away.